ACT III
Jenny : Gives us fortitude to bear our trials! Who cares whether we bear them or not? Listen, Frank. I had a dream the other night. I used to dream of Chris in France . . . all the horrors I’d ever heard or read about . . . but this was something different. Perhaps it wasn’t a dream . . . perhaps it was a vision . . . a revelation. It was out in France, somewhere behind the lines, in a wrecked village with a church that had no tower left, and a few houses and shops . . . filthy, tumbledown places, and dirty, bare-armed, slouchy women sitting at their doors. And in one of the shops was Chris, standing talking across a counter to an old man in a blouse—an old man with a scar running into his beard, and smiling . . . a curious smile, lewd and yet benevolent . . . somehow complete . . . like the soul of the universe smiling, knowing everything and disregarding everything . . . seeing me and seeing the slouchy woman at her door . . . and seeing both of us alike . . . equally important . . . or unimportant. And Chris was leaning against the counter with his eyes glazed. It was his spirit . . . not his body. That lay rotting out there in the mud. He was looking at two crystals that the old man was showing him . . . looking into them. In one of them was Margaret . . . oh, not as we see her in her raincoat and that awful hat, but transfigured . . . eternal. And
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